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olsmeister writes "MagicJack is demonstrating a femtocell device at CES that will allow any GSM phone (locked or unlocked) to place free phone calls over the internet using VOIP. The device costs $40 and includes free service for 1 year. It supposedly will cover a 3,000 sq ft house."

There's no "trick" to work with locked phones. GSM has no network-side authentication, so all you have to do is impersonate your carrier's network (this is trivial). But I can't imagine this being in line with regulations. Another issue is that encryption does not work unless you're a carrier and share a secret with the phone's SIM, which means that invariably your calls will be broadcast in the clear when you're using this device.

I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea. Femtocells are great, but impersonating carriers gets you into all sorts of sticky issues.

Illegal as hell under FCC rules since this would would be an unlicensed device intentionally disrupting a licensed service. At least that's my reading, the device might as well be a DoS for legitimate users within the range of the device.

AT&T's MicroCell [att.com] (which is a UMTS base station) includes a GPS receiver and requires a GPS signal in order to operate, because it transmits only on frequencies licensed to AT&T in the area the device is being used. (Mobile carriers in the USA do not have nationwide spectrum licenses, and the frequencies they are permitted to use vary throughout the country.)

By your logic, those minijack-to-FM transmitters should also be illegal, but they're not. The FCC allows people to broadcast as long as they restrict it to a certain power level that won't interfere with others.

Illegal as hell under FCC rules since this would would be an unlicensed device intentionally disrupting a licensed service. At least that's my reading, the device might as well be a DoS for legitimate users within the range of the device.

That's what I was thinking. I wonder how long this product will last until AT&T or one of the other carriers takes the producer of this thing to court.

I'd say buy it quick before it's gone, but given it hooks to a service there is really no point. There's a commentary on the viability of the service model that everyone seems to be running toward there.

Only in designated spectrum. And even then you need to register with the FCC and have the device type accepted. Take a look at all devices that transmit anything and note the FCCID string that is on said device. Those fall under the Part 95 licensing.

Not to mention that UMTS phones will prefer the UMTS signal even if a GSM signal is available. Also, it will stop working once GSM goes away and is fully replaced by UMTS (which does authenticate the network), if that does ever happen.

One of the weird things I've run into in doing 3rd-party tech support is that houses can, indeed, have Faraday cages.

If the house is of the right vintage (mostly pre-1950's) it may have plaster walls. One method of hanging plaster is to put up a metal mesh lath [wikipedia.org] which can make a very effective Faraday cage out of each of the rooms.

A modern variation on the builtin Faraday cage is rigid foam insulation that is covered on one or both sides with a metal reflective coating, often used in external wall insulation.

When a new customer calls and says they are having trouble getting wireless to work in their house, one of my first questions is does it have plaster walls.

Another issue is that encryption does not work unless you're a carrier and share a secret with the phone's SIM, which means that invariably your calls will be broadcast in the clear when you're using this device.

This is no different than most household wireless phones or blue-tooth headsets for cellphones.

Seriously, it seems like you don't have it, otherwise if you do, and you still say this, you don't realize what you have.
It works great, the "ad-laden software" you speak of is not that, it has a couple frames that load MJ deals, that's it.
It doesn't swallow your bandwidth.
It doesn't 'infect' your pc with adware like you make it sound.
It has great tech support.
And yes, unlimited service for 20$/year is totally possible, why, because of the crazy little idea people are talking about, called the "internet".
And you don't have to leave your pc on 24/7.
If the unit isn't plugged in, their servers host your voicemail, and you can access it remotely via a regular phone...
Sounds like you either don't have it, or you had a rotten time with it, but I live, breathe, and eat computers, and this is by far the BEST phone service provider deal hands down.
Sure, it's not a cell phone, but if you have a laptop/netbook, are you really gonna say that you can't pretty much go anywhere without being able to find the internet? Heck, paired with a random 3G adapter even...
I don't mean to offend, but your words just reek of ignorance or impatience...

$20/year really isn't possible, because no matter how low their internal operating costs, they have to terminate calls on the PSTN, and they don't have equipment in every city to do that on their own network. Legally mandated termination fees for rural areas can be $0.04/minute (or sometimes even higher) -- at that rate you'd only be able to talk for 500 minutes before they'd be in debt.

Well, considering when I am not actively using it, and the computer is in sleep mode, it only consumes about 5-6 watts I am not too worried about the few extra dollars per year I spend leaving it on all the time. That is the equivalent of burning a 120 watt light bulb for about an hour a day.

There's also another device: Nettalk TK6000 [tk6000.com], which looks quite a bit like MagicJack, but without the USB connector. It doesn't require a PC at all.

As for MagicJack, I have been using one at home for several months now. I have it running on a headless XP desktop, so the ad-laden call manager doesn't bother me since I never see it. Sometimes the call quality isn't that great, especially when I first got it, but after some tweaks, it's working rather well.

There's also another device: Nettalk TK6000, which looks quite a bit like MagicJack, but without the USB connector. It doesn't require a PC at all.

This looks like a standard ATA, bundled with a VoIP provider. These are fairly common.The clever bit with the MagicJack is using GSM rather than wired phones. Though it requires a computer running Windows and the article dosn't address issues like using more than one handset at once.

Yes. I have been on it for 1 year. I have a TK6000 now as well with the intention of moving over to that over the next year.

MagicJack's software or device seems to have issues over long periods of time that require the device get unplugged (reboot) along with the software restarting or the quality becomes unusable. This may be a mac issue. It is basically a standard audio i/o device and therefore switching users causes the user-based app to lose the audio for the phone; but maintains a network connection

I've had MajicJack for more than 6 months now, it's the best thing I have ever found for phone service.
Yes it sucks at times when I'm downloading etc, then the quality suffers a little, but otherwise 20$ a year, ya, I bet anyone and everyone screaming "SCAM!" is a freakin phone service salesman...
Phone companies and cell companies can't come anywhere near 20$ a year, not even skype, and I have noticed the quality IS better than skype...
MajicJack == the end of the line for residential phone companies

If you have a cell phone, then you typically have a contract. If you have the resources for a broadband connection, then you have the resources for a mobile phone contract.

This is where the error is. It USED to be the case that everyone with a cell was under contract, but since the introduction of pay-as-you-go (prepaid) cell phones, you can buy minutes and hold them forever. This device allows you to save those minutes for when you are away from the home, while otherwise using the same phone at home for

So does it allow you to make calls when you're not in range of your house, like the guy's T-Mobile contract?

I think that's the point. The problem here with all the "VoIP and Wifi will take over from old fashioned phones" people is that they're bucking the trend. People have migrated in droves from landlines to cellphones, despite the higher costs associated with the latter, for the very simple reason that cellphones work everywhere and landlines only work in one spot.

I'm sure this will eventually adapt to the new wireless paradigm eventually but for some services I have they REQUIRE a landline (home phone) before they will let you sign up for service. I would have to go back and look to remember which services in particular but I think my natural gas provider had this requirement. It's probably not as much an issue for apartment/condo dwellers since the landlord would handle those contracts.

Many have them to ensure 911 service knows how to find you. An address on file w

The majority of people will find something like this useful as they spend most of their time either at home or in the office. It combines the beauty of having your cellphone available anywhere, yet making 95% of your calls free. However it won't take off as the cellphone providers will just bundle enough minutes to not make it worth it. Here in the UK you can pay £30/month for unlimited calls and sms. More expensive but less hassle.

I've been using it as a business line and it's been great to me so far. The unanswered calls go to voice mail, it's never busy, and the voice mail is automatically emailed to me as an attachment.

The desktop client is a little clunky, it's just a dialer. Something like visual voicemail would be sweet. It's a little slow to start up like it's downloading updates or something. I'd love be able to upload an audio file as my outgoing message (any suggestions anyone?)

The real problem with MagicJack is that their business model is not sustainable. ie. it's too cheap for what they offer. Currently they are burning money like crazy.

Eventually something is going to change. They're either going to have to change the pricing, seriously degrade their service (eg. too large of a customer base), or close their doors. The turnover of VOIP providers is insane, most go out of business. Establishing a phone number and then losing it or having to find a new provider because the

A) Some people don't get Cell Reception (or it costs more than the land line)
B) A few of us live in places where the cell phones have gone down after mother nature had a fit, but the land lines were still working perfectly.

If I was ATT or Verizon or T-Mobil I would want everyone to own one of these things.

The reason being is that on my cell phone (I have the unlimited plan so I gave up ye olde land line years ago) 90% of my calls are made from home. I suspect my usage probably mirrors a lot of other users. (maybe a different pattern for teens running to friends all the time and what not but they like texting anyway so thats almost no bandwidth used)

The current MagicJack is a device about the size of a matchbox with a USB connection and a phone jack. The USB connector plugs into the user's computer, loads software onto it, and uses the computer's power, processor and broadband connection. The femtocell will also use the PC, but it will let users make calls with their cell phones instead of wired phones.

The TOS for MJ is one of the worst I have ever seen; they could write malware and get protected by the TOS you must agree to. Most people don't read it... At 1st I wondered if they were going 2 make their money by spying on me. (lotta luck I did all I could to sandbox it and later ran it in a VM... now I moved to a TK6000)

This post will mention specific products and services, but of which I am a customer and the following is my testimony.

For my home phone:I signed up with CallCentric for free.I bought a Linksys PAP2 for $50 before shipping. (This is the VIOP box which allows me to keep my standard phone/message machine)I set it up with CallCentric and tested the service with CallCentric-assigned ph#.For $20 I ported my phone# over to CallCentric.For $3.95 a month, I get calling and $0.015 (1.5cents) per minute calling to US and Canada. The fee is a 911-recovery fee and some other fee.My phone bill is less than $5 a month.

There is no PC required, just the PAP2 and the broadband connection. I even get callerID!

They can, but this is for residential service, where most people don't have ethernet jacks in the walls, but rather, just have a router somewhere and their computers are typically nowhere near it thanks to wireless. So how is the average yob going to get his phone connected to the router on the other side of the house? Now he doesn't need to worry about it, since he can just plug it into his computer, which is probably on his desk anyway.

It does? It shows the ad for their additional dialing features (like international) next to the onscreen dial pad, but I think that is all. There are no pop-up ads for anything for third parties. You can even install some third-party addons that stop that thing from popping up when you start dialing.

While I can see this working great for people out in the middle of nowhere that somehow have great internet and terrible cell service, I can't see this working for the average person to make free calls. For one, this solution would eliminate any encryption meaning your calls are able to be intercepted with ease, another is, I'm not entirely sure that Magic Jack would encrypt your calls going over the internet leading to possible interception there, and then if it was broadcast through another femtocell it could be intercepted through there again. In short, it may be a way for people to save a few bucks, but at the cost of any privacy.

You know, T-Mobile, a few years back, introduced UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) [wikipedia.org] with some of their phones (which T-Mo has subsequently marketted under 3 different names, you know, to confuse their customers, I guess), but none of the other carriers picked up on it, and T-Mo pretty quickly abandoned it - I believe their network still supports it, and some/all of their Blackberries support it, but they pretty quickly stopped advertising it, none of the Android phones support it, and T-Mo has quietly gotten rid of every non-Blackberry phone that used to have the UMA feature.

It's really kind of a shame - UMA is a great idea: basically, any WiFi hotspot that you can connect to become a "cell tower" (well, it routes cell phone traffic over a tunnel on the Internet, to T-Mo's network, so it basically becomes VoIP). This Femtocell idea is something that some of the other carriers are sort of testing (I have some relatives on Sprint who got one because there is very poor reception at their house). But, I think UMA is a superior solution to these femtocells, because a) with UMA, you need a phone with UMA support, but you had to get a phone anyway, so adding UMA to phones would have been almost 'free' from the customer perspective, with the only other equipment needed being something you *probably* already have, and if you don't, you can get dirt cheap at Microcenter, Best Buy, Fry's, etc., and B) the femtocell will *only* work at your own location where you put it, whereas UMA would work with any Internet connection and most Wifi hotspots, which means that I could take advantage of it at other locations if they have WiFi (relatives or friends houses, school, work, shopping, etc) too.

Now, I think with the Android phones, you can now do some VoIP calling, but the advantage with UMA was that calls would seamlessly transfer between wifi and the cell network (if you left Wifi range, or entered Wifi range). It's really a damn shame that the cell phone industry didn't adopt UMA as a feature, because to me, it seems like a vastly superior approach than femtocells.

I suppose it's theoretically possible that UMA could rise from the ashes, but at this point, it seems kinda dead. More's the pity.

UMA is a great idea: basically, any WiFi hotspot that you can connect to become a "cell tower" (well, it routes cell phone traffic over a tunnel on the Internet, to T-Mo's network, so it basically becomes VoIP)

This isn't ideal: wifi uses more power than GSM or 3G.

This Femtocell idea is something that some of the other carriers are sort of testing (I have some relatives on Sprint who got one because there is very poor reception at their house).

Well, yes, it won't work at *every single possible* Wifi hotspot, but it will work at most. As for the power issue, if I'm at a location where my cell access sucks, I'm willing to make that tradeoff. My point is, that UMA phones will benefit at lots of locations, potentially, whereas femtocells only benefit you at a fixed location. Most people and businesses don't have femtocells installed, but a great many (at least in the U.S.) do have Wifi.

It's wonderfully idea if, like a lot of people, you don't get great T-Mobile service inside your home (their share of the spectrum doesn't penetrate well or something). It's a wonderful tradeoff, and the reason why I went with T-Mobile when I had the chance.

You can't QoS the magicjack. it uses a HUGE range of ports making the QoS only useful if you don't do something else in that wide UDP range they use. It only initiates with a predictable port the proxy gets it going in some random range after that. Unless you have a fancy router that can figure it out somehow (by destination) you basically are taking the upper range of UDP to a higher priority. The software doesn't let you pick the connection; otherwise you could stick it on a second network port and handl

When it takes only slightly more tech-fu to get a real SIP based setup working. However, if they are actually planning on selling a $40 USB peripheral than functions as a GSM femtocell, I am interested. Very Interested.

Reverse engineering the sucker, and getting a Free driver built would be a hell of a boon to small scale asterisk setups and similar. Most devices running asterisk or other software PBXs have at least one USB port, and being able to set up your own asterisk integrated femtocell would be awesome(either to let you take advantage of a lower priced/fewer minutes plan by doing all your home calling over a cheap SIP trunk or simply to take advantage of the fact that used and/or low-end GSM handsets are substantially cheaper than decent Wi Fi based SIP handsets are).

I don't assume that they would approve(and I can't imagine that team traditional telco would be too happy either) but if MagicJack is actually planning to make femtocells as cheap as USB wifi dongles, they get a gold star from me.

Why is this called a femto cell? The area covered is much more than 10^-15 of that of a standard cell tower. If this device covers a radius of 50 ft, and a tower works to a radius of about mile, then the fractional area covered is 10^-4, or somewhere between a microcell and a millicell.

Mod me off-topic if you need to, but this title is why I my relationship with the English language is still slightly iffy.

MagicJack Femtocell Gates Cell Traffic to VoIP

So let's see, proper noun, noun, noun, noun, preposition, noun. Where's the verb? Who's trafficking cells through the gates here? Or wait, the cell traffic of the femtocell gates is to... no, wait. With all the noun-as-adjective and ambiguous noun-or-verb words, your natural parser screws up---assuming your natural parser (like mine) is greedy and wants to impose structure as early and often as possible.

Would it really be that awful to say "MagicJack femtocell gating cell traffic to voip"? Then you need a smaller token (i.e. word) lookahead before you can reduce "MagicJack femtocell" into subject, "gating" into verb, "cell traffic" to object, etc. (or at least, you will sooner make guesses which later turn out to be correct, and so you won't have to backtrack).

The software/drivers are in no way reliable enough to make it a serious replacement for a "real" phone, but as a backup when you want to make free calls around North America, it's not a bad solution. The call quality is perfectly fine. It's worth the $20/year they charge, but not a whole lot more. If they could get their software (and their abominable, laughable, seizure-inducing support) to work a little more smoothly, I'd be more willing to consider additional products from the company.

Is it really that much better and more convenient than WiFi? When I am in my house, I press the Internet calling icon on my phone and it connects to my VoIP provider's server via SIP. I can then make and receive calls via VoIP rather than the mobile network. It also works when I am near other WiFi networks (great for traveling; hotels charge a lot for phone calls but often don't for WiFi, so if you make calls via their WiFi you don't pay anything). It uses slightly more battery, but not much. Calls to

MagicJack is designed to work with existing land-line type phones. It's quite a bit different than what you're talking about. It's a USB device you plug into your computer, the phone goes into the device and the software connects to the VOIP server. From one of the guys I know who has it, it's possible to plug the MJ into your household outlet and have your phones around the house as well. There is a power limitation on how much the phones can draw, but most phones made today do not have a problem with

The ability to ditch your wireless phone and use your existing mobile phone (provided it has GSM) as well as use the service without dedicating a computer to the task. Basically, when you walk in the house and walk past the femtocell your mobile phone re-syncs to the femtocelll and now you are no longer using your wireless carrier but Magic Jack for service. When you leave the house your phone reconnects to your mobile carrier. Why do you need this? You may not but there is still a large enough constituency

This product appears to be different from the late night "Magic Jack!" product you're referring to. This is a femtocell "mini-tower" that allows cell phones to connect to the VOIP provider on the other end of the magic jack tower - so you wouldn't be limited to land lines with this new product.

Is it really that much better and more convenient than WiFi? When I am in my house, I press the Internet calling icon on my phone and it connects to my VoIP provider's server via SIP.

For starters it will work for ANY GSM phone. It doesn't matter if it has WiFi or not. Second, it's cheaper than your VOIP provider unless your VOIP provider can beat $1.70 mo.

I have been using T-Mobile's @Home service for the past year ($10 month as a third line) and it's been extremely reliable. I didn't like Magic Jack because I needed a computer and their software on it to have phone service at home. If this thing works as advertised I just may pull the trigger.

na, I was curious about it too, but it's gotta be the best phone type gear I've ever got..
I did have quality issues in the beginning, but after a call to customer service, after the results of their troubleshooting (and my tech skillz), THEY admitted to their server causing the issue, and said "we'll be updating the server soon".
I didn't know what to think.
A couple days later, the issue was fixed, and quality was 100%.
I stand by this product, and those who say it's a scam, are either r-tarded, or are afraid for their phone company they work for...

I've got an Ooma system. 3000 free local or long distance minutes a month, no monthly charge. The call quality isn't perfect, but I'm saving $300 a year after it pays for itself in 8 months (2 months from now), and I'm not going to complain.

Consumer reports said no such thing. In fact, they gave it a reasonably positive review [telemarket...omhome.com] (and yes, I realize that this is not consumer reports' website, but I read the print article when it arrived in my mailbox a week ago, and to my memory it is close if not a direct reprint). I am not endorsing the product, and I know little about it, to say that Consumer Reports said it is a scam is disingenuous.

Sorry to reply to myself, but I realized I was retarded and pasted the wrong link (and yet didn't realize that when I said it wasn't consumer reports' website... right... it's Friday, and I've checked out.). Here is the link [consumerreports.org] I meant to post... right.

The device is $150. IF you sign up for an unlimited minutes plan, they will give you a $100 mail-in rebate. The plan's pricing depends on which test market you are in, and whether or not you have AT&T DSL or U-Verse service. But in any event, an unlimited minutes plan is optional. You can just buy the box for $150 and use your plans minutes as normal. The purpose the box serves under those circumstances is merely improving your coverage.

Lot's of people figure you can't negotiate with a cell or cable company, but that might not be true. I have relatives who use Sprint. They've been using Sprint for a few years, and had upgraded to a more premium voice & data package for 2 phones. They were generally happy with Sprint, but the coverage at their house was crappy. They talked to Sprint about this, basically told them they weren't going to pay additional monthly fees on top of the premium package fees they were already paying, but were unha